Fr.

Markus Heggenberger
Editor, The Angelus
2915 Forest Avenue • Kansas City, MO 64109
February 25, 2010
Dear Fr. Heggenberger
I am in receipt of your reply to the concerns I raised in my letter of Jan. 17 w
ith regard to the December, 2009,
Angelus essay by Scott Montgomery, "Saint of the Sanhedrin" (pp. 29-34). With al
l due respect, it must be said
that your reply is inadequate and constitutes an evasion. Never once in your let
ter can you bring yourself to
mention Hillel, when it was Hillel, not Gamaliel, who was the main focus of my c
oncern that the Angelus has
published perverse adulation of this vile Pharisee, repeating rabbinic propagand
a about Hillel and lauding him
as a figure worthy of the admiration of Catholics.
Part of the evidence I presented has been contemptuously dismissed as “all sorts
of questions related to
Judaism...With all these questions, which are apparently of interest to you, nei
ther ‘The Angelus’ in general nor
the incriminated article has anything to do.”
In order to maintain this notion that facts are irrelevant to the substance of t
he article you published, you quote
me as writing, “The Talmud nullifies the Biblical teaching concerning usury and
money-lending.” But you omit
my next sentence: "Hillel decreed the prozbul ...a legal fiction which allows de
bts to be collected after the
Sabbatical year and it was Hillel s intention thereby to overcome the fear that
money-lenders had of losing their
money."
Hillel, who the Angelus believes was a good Pharisee, nullified the Biblical law
against usury in support of
money-lenders. How is it that this damning fact is supposedly of concern only to
this writer? It is your magazine
that exalts Hillel. I demonstrated Hillel’s grave transgression and the folly of
upholding Hillel as a paradigm of
an alleged good Pharisee. How then can his record of transgressions be of no int
erest?
You allege that another irrelevancy is my reference to “permissible sex.” Once a
gain, you omit the context — I
mentioned “permissible sex” in connection with a specific charge against Hillel:
his establishment of the
depraved and disgusting halachot (legal principle) that sex between a mother and
her son does not actually
qualify as sex, if the son is less than nine years-old — yet you dare to assert
that these matters have nothing to
do with The Angelus or the article in question, when it is The Angelus that hono
rs this evil man.
You claim that “Mr. Montgomery simply states that there were tendencies in Judai
sm that were open to the
Gospel.” Au contraire, Mr. Montgomery went far beyond any such simplicity when h
e asserted that Hillel
“served as an instrument of heaven.” You are unwilling to take any responsibilit
y for this outrageous mendacity;
you evade it, and you appear to have no intention of correcting it in any future
issue of The Angelus. Apparently
you do not even intend to correct easily demonstrable errors, such as Mr. Montgo
mery’s assertion that St. Paul
learned the Gemara from Gamaliel, when in fact the Gemara did not even exist at
the time of St. Paul.
Even in your focus on Gamaliel to the exclusion of Hillel, you blunder. You shou
ld know that Wikipedia is not a
reliable scholarly source for establishing the verity of much of anything. Wikip
edia refers to the “Clementine
Literature” as the basis for its spurious claims about Gamaliel. Are you aware t
hat this “Literature” comprises
one of the pseudepigraphic legends? This particular legend fantasized that Gamal
iel became a Christian, but
there is absolutely no proof for this claim.
Michael Hoffman • Box 849 • Coeur dʼAlene • Idaho • 83816
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The sole primary source for this fantasy is the spurious Recognitions of Clement
, a book which contains a mix
of pagan philosophy and a curious theology attributed to St. Peter.
The notion that Gamaliel was benevolent in part because he was the teacher of Pa
ul (Acts 22:3) is also a fallacy.
Gamaliel was the teacher of Saul, the wicked persecutor of Christians who went o
n to convert to Christ and
become the saintly Apostle Paul. When he was Saul, the pupil of Gamaliel, he may
even have had a hand in the
murder of St. Stephen. Can we absolve Gamaliel and the Mishnaic teachings which
he imparted to Saul by
imagining they had no role in Saul s iniquity?
Moreover, there has been a surfeit of wishful thinking concerning Gamaliel s sta
tement of neutrality toward
Christians (Acts 5:35-39), which may have been nothing more than a display of sl
y Pharisee caution. How can
anyone assume that Gamaliel’s neutrality was pleasing to God, or that it marked
Gamaliel as a future Christian?
Jesus said, "I would you were hot or cold" (Rev. 3:16). Gamaliel was neither.
You state that, “The Angelus’ does not try to replace the Bible with the Talmud.
...” You then cast a strange
aspersion on my good name and reputation by adding, “you would be much better qu
alified for that by the
way.” Do you mean to say that it is this writer who favors the Talmud over the B
ible? If so, where in my entire
oeuvre is there one line I have written that you can adduce for your charge? You
r statement is as reckless as the
“Saint of the Sanhedrin” essay you published without fact-checking; a blunder yo
u compound by referencing
Wikipedia, a notoriously unreliable Internet “encyclopedia” often consulted by p
ersons too lethargic to engage
in authentic research.
You write, “Your accusations are wrong...I say: what is good enough for the Chur
ch Fathers and for the Catholic
Encyclopedia, is good enough for me.” But Reverend Father, there is nothing in t
he Church Fathers that
supports the claims The Angelus makes for Gamaliel, and as for the Catholic Ency
clopedia, you have only
troubled to consult the 1913 version. The 1967 Catholic Encyclopedia, which is n
ot online, does not validate
anything Mr. Montgomery has written about Gamaliel or Hillel. In fact, the latte
r work correctly indicts Hillel
as the source for the Pharisaic teaching that permitted divorce on trivial groun
ds, and which was the basis for
the attempted entrapment by which the Pharisees hoped to ensnare Jesus (Matthew
19: 3-9). Hillel taught
against restricting divorce to sexual immorality: "The school of Hillel says: [H
e may divorce her] even if she
cooked his food poorly” (Mishnah, Gittin 9:10). It was with Hillel’s doctrine on
 divorce that Jesus was
confronted. You and your writer must be surprised that Jesus rebuked rather than
embraced the Pharisees for
this doctrine, since it emanated from the very Pharisee whom The Angelus exults
as “an instrument of heaven.”
You dismiss the need for scholarship in these exegetical matters, yet you and Mr
. Montgomery are sadly
confused and decidedly ignorant of the subject matter. I repeat what I wrote to
you on January 26: “The Angelus
presents rabbinic delusions as fact and promotes the wicked Pharisee Hillel as a
virtual holy man of God. The
great confusion among traditional Catholics concerning Judaism will only be exac
erbated by the farrago you
have published, to the detriment of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the understan
ding of the faithful. It is my
prayer that you will somehow undo the damage that has been wrought.” I am still
waiting.
Jesus Christ was not a party to the modern Vatican mania for finding something —
anything — allegedly
positive in the Pharisees. In our time this fad is intended to curry ecumenical
favor with the rabbis. Whether
intentional or not, the Angelus article “Saint of the Sanhedrin” is of this teno
r. It is an expression of the
modernist zeitgeist. “Servility to the Sanhedrin” would have been a more apt tit
le. I beseech you to make
amends and correct this most unfortunate disservice to your readers, without fur
ther delay.
Sincerely in Christ, Michael Hoffman
Michael Hoffman • Box 849 • Coeur dʼAlene • Idaho • 83816
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